4 steps to publish a book

Hi, invisible ones!

Today I think I'm going to talk about how to publish books. You know, since my characters were "born", more than a year ago, I've been thinking about stories for them, I've been developing their lives, and I have asked myself a lot of times: "Could I do something with what I've got so far? Could I share it, for example, on the Internet, to let people know about it? Could they give me their opinion and help me improve my story?" But I didn't have the answer. I've got a friend who loves writing and thinking about new stories like me. It's crazy when we meet each other and we start talking: "So that character blah blah blah... and that other... and that scene maybe should be narrated in first person..." And we get lost in our world and the others of our group look at us like we had gone mad. Well, that friend isn't for writing on the Internet. She thinks it's a great risk, as someone could steal your ideas. But there are people who DO write on the Internet. A lot of people even create blogs to promote their stories. And do all that people really have a copyright to prove that they are the rightful authors in case someone grabbed ideas from them? I felt like we were missing something, and that’s why I investigated about the different ways of publishing books. I think it’s better to know the possibilities your ideas have from the very start.

So here you are, publishing in 4 steps:

1.     Finishing the book. There are writers, for example the one from this blog, who say you must finish your novel before thinking about publishing. But I don’t agree with that. What if you have different options about the progress of the story, and you want someone else’s opinion to help you decide? Well, don’t worry, if you don’t want to finish it all by your own, without any other point of view, here comes step 2.

2.     Revising the novel. As I’ve already said, for me it isn’t important that the book is finished to start revising, as doubts may come while WRITING the novel, and not when you’ve already pieced things together. There are 3 ways of revising:

2.1.  Ask their opinion to people we know who like reading, and also ask them to be strict; flatteries won’t help our improving.

2.2.  Create a forum on the Internet to share our novel while we write it. This way we can get people’s opinions and ideas that may enrich our novel. But here’s the delicate point: How can we be sure that nobody will plagiarize us? We can’t register at the Intellectual Property until the book it’s finished, and that’s why we still don’t have any rights as authors. Well, if you’re worried, you can protect your ideas with a Creative Commons license, for example. Or maybe create a private forum instead of a public one, so that you know the people who can read your novel; people who you know that wouldn’t do such a cruel thing to you.

2.3.  Send it to a literary agency. Literary agencies are formed by professionals who will help us to enhance our novel’s virtues and make it “work” in book’s market. Or so they say.

3.     Registering our work at the Intellectual Property. We have finished our novel, and in order to bring it out, we must get our exclusive rights as authors recognized by the law. I think you must search on the Internet the Intellectual Property Office which is located closer to you and go there. Easy-peasy!

4.     From here, sky’s the limit and we can consider a lot of different ways to proceed. Here you have three usual ones:

4.1.  Send your novel to a literary contest. Here the only thing you have to do to get your novel published is… winning!! So do your best!

4.2.  Send it to a publishing house. It isn’t a very difficult thing to do, as almost all publishing houses have e-mails on their websites. You just have to send an e-mail asking for a mailing address to send your work to. Send it to all the companies you think that might be interested in your novel (don’t have a try with a company that only publishes for kids if your novel is directed to adults, for example.), and keep on working in other projects. Publishers usually take their time to answer!  

4.3.  Publish it yourself. This is a bit more difficult, as you have to do everything the publisher would do. But don’t give up! Your goal is to have your novel published; if companies dismiss your work, you just have to publish it yourself! Here you have the steps, more or less:

4.3.1.   Create your book’s structure basing on a book’s layout that you like: size, font, indentation…

4.3.2.  Adjust those parameters to a Word document.

4.3.3.  Revise the orthography and make a printing test with your own printer.

4.3.4.  Convert the Word document to PDF.

4.3.5.  Design your title page with a program like Photoshop.

4.3.6.  Request your ISBN and Legal Deposit so that you can sell your book.

4.3.7.  Calculate the printing cost.

4.3.8.  Ask for a printing test to a printing house.
4.3.9.  Organize your book’s promotion, creating a blog about it, for example, and then sell it on the Internet!

And here I finish for today. I hope those steps help you if you are future writers! Or future mangaka! If you don't know what it is, don't worry, I'll tell you next time!
See you soon!